I’ve come across two other reviews of this book which both sum it up rather well and identify how surprising difficult I’ve found reviewing it. Director magazine commented that:
We’ve all spent long days on training courses only to emerge with little more than a single useful piece of paper with one idea on it. This book is a little like 50 of those pieces of paper pulled together in one place.”
An Amazon UK reviewer I can identify only as Dream Diver meanwhile drew these conclusions:
I think the clue that this book is just a compilation is in the title. The author perhaps couldn’t make a decision on which model was best. May be useful for MSc student who needs a simple guide to identify the many models of strategic thinking. As a Complexity thinker I personally think it shows the frailty of depending on models in real world situations.”
To this reviewer, The Decision Book is a classic example of a book that some will love and cherish and others may not see the point of: it depends what the individuals in question are looking for, how much of it they hope to discover when they find it – and, I guess, how many training courses aimed at Director magazine readers they’ve been on! It also reminded me that models are a double-edged sword – a theme we’ve hardly left untouched on this blog – although the possibilities of over-simplification and the importance of remaining conscious you’re working with a model don’t, judging by the Instructions for Use, escape the authors.
Ed
ainsley mcleod
anton franckeiss
robert terry
naysan firoozmand
michael mckiernan
sally terry
elainewilson
chrisjohnrogers
matt evans
The Graduate
